Townsend
It’s still dark when Townsend steps outside on Tuesday morning, and he can just imagine what Talia would say:Men don’t know how lucky they are, to be able to run alone whenever they want without fearing for their lives.He doesn’t think about his male privilege—or, really, the many types of privilege he holds—as often as he should, but he doesn’t want to mull over that right now. Instead, he sticks his AirPods into his ears and heads down Congress Avenue toward Butler Trail, which meanders along the north shore of Town Lake. Right now, he just wants to listen to Jack Harlow and figure out what the fuck is going on.
The police don’t think he’s guilty; that much is a relief. Or, at least, they don’tseemto think he’s guilty—Townsend has watched enough episodes ofLaw & Orderto know the police sometimes play nice with their prime suspect, hoping to catch them off their game. But Townsend knows better than to let his guard down with them. With anyone, really.
With Amanda, Townsend fucked up—not only because he got caught by Talia, but because he fell for her wiles in the first place. He can still remember the picture that made him swipe right: a blond in a leather mini perched in a nightclub booth, one hand clutching a pink drink and the other touching her lips, like an invitation. She looked like trouble, and after months of playing house with Talia, a little troublefelt like a welcome change. His dad was sick. His start-up was struggling. The holiday season depressed him. Townsend could think of a dozen excuses for why he did it, but really, he had no excuse. Boredom was the reason, and it wasn’t an excuse.
He’s jogging now by the park at Waller Beach, where he and Amanda attended a protest on one of their very first hangouts. Amanda, like many of her fellow hippie Austinites, was opposed to the Texas Department of Transportation’s multibillion-dollar plan to expand I-35. He smiles despite himself, thinking about how pink her cheeks used to get whenever they debated the project.
“It’ll improve congestion, and it’ll provide better connectivity between the east and the west,” he told her. “Not to mention it’s projected to drive more than ten billion dollars in economic development over the next three decades.”
Amanda had huffed at this argument. “Yes, it will benefit drivers and businesses,” she shot back. “And in the process, it will displace people and homes and result in more tailpipe emissions than ever.”
It was early December when she invited him to the protest. They’d been talking for a few weeks, and they’d had sex once—just an impulsive, late-night rendezvous at her grubby little studio apartment in East Austin. The protest was the first time they saw each other in daylight, out in public, and though he attended the event just to humor her (protests were futile, in his opinion, and the I-35 expansion was inevitable), she surprised him. He thought Amanda was just some silly party girl, but marching around Waller Beach, brandishing thatWider Won’t Worksign above her head, Townsend saw someone new: A rebel. A fighter. Someone so unlike Talia, who wanted nothing more than to behave and be accepted and follow the rules. He fell a little bit in love with Amanda that day, and though she didn’t change his mind about the I-35 expansion, shedidmake him believe that she’d be worth the risk. What a fucking mistake that had been.
Still keeping a respectable jogging pace, Townsend crosses over the not-yet-expanded I-35. He shivers with delight each time a car whizzespast, reminding him just how easily he could be pulverized, his flesh and bones turned to pulp on the asphalt. It’s not like he plans to jump in front of a car and off himself, obviously. It’s just reassuring, knowing how quick it would be.
After everything that’s happened, Townsend is reluctant to admit it—but when things were good with Amanda, they weresogood. The two started seeing each other more and more frequently following the protest, meeting up at Amanda’s place as often as two or three times a week. There, he could unwind and unload his struggles with AutoInTune, and he didn’t have to worry about Amanda pushing him tostick to itandkeep at it, like Talia the cheerleader always would. Amanda, like him, was too jaded for toxic positivity. She’d just listen to him bitch, and then they’d smoke weed, eat burritos, and have insanely good sex.
Afterward, Townsend would return to his condo, where he would text Talia to complain about another late night in the office. With that throaty laugh and that sexy little hip tattoo, Amanda had him under her spell—and for a short time, Townsend genuinely believed he could have his cake and eat it too.
His critical error: inviting Amanda to spend the night at his place, all the while knowing Talia had the key code and could appear at any moment. It was a Saturday, just about a week before Christmas, when she caught them naked in his bed, and the look of betrayal on Talia’s face is a memory he’ll never be able to erase.
Still, as mortifying as it was, Townsend felt an initial sense of relief. At least now he could be with Amanda without sneaking around.
He should have known the universe wouldn’t be so kind as to let him get away scot-free.
Amanda didn’t change overnight; he would have noticed that. Instead, she sunk her claws in bit by bit, so slowly that he felt little more than a pinch. Their nights of weed and burritos and sex at her place turned into expensive dinners out and sleepovers at his, where she would hang around watching TV and eating his snacks until well pastnoon the next day. She’d steal his Canali dress shirts to wear, then return them stained with orangey makeup. When he bought her a mini woven leather tote from Bottega Veneta for their one-month anniversary, she asked if he could exchange it for the larger version.
Things really took a turn around Valentine’s Day, when Townsend treated Amanda to an expensive prix fixe at Jeffrey’s. After leaving his condo the next morning, she posted a photo from the restaurant on Instagram (and he recognized the image well, as she’d spent half the dinner coaching him on how to take it). Though he wished she hadn’t tagged him, the caption was innocuous enough ... but then the messages through Cuff started.
This feels like the beginning of forever.
I’m so fxcking in love with you.
Do you feel it too? What I feel for you?
When they first started seeing each other, Townsend had been reluctant to give Amanda his number. It seemed too risky. What if Amanda called or texted him and Talia saw? So they kept their messages to Cuff—the irony of which was not lost on Townsend. But he’d heard Talia wax on about the app’s security and encryption protections enough times to trust that his communications with Amanda would remain private.
Even after Talia was gone and there was no need for cloak-and-dagger measures anymore, they continued to chat mainly through Cuff, mostly out of habit. But also because Amanda was always losing her phone and never remembered to back up her contacts.
Sometimes, she’d trick him into believing she was still the chill, free-spirited woman he once believed her to be. They’d hang out, Amanda letting herself in with the key code that he only ever shared before with Talia. They’d lay on the couch, fool around a little. Maybesmoke a joint. It seemed totally normal. But then she’d go home and send him messages on Cuff, asking crazy shit like what they should name their future children.I want to have five kids,she wrote once,and I want them all to have your eyes.It started out slowly, just one or two messages a day, but then she started to send them more frequently, and they became increasingly more intense. She wanted them to grow old together. She wanted to know if he believed in soulmates.
The final straw came the first weekend in March. That Sunday afternoon, she showed up without invitation, as usual, and surprised him with a fantastic blow job. Then she invited him to spend the summer with her in Europe.
“You know that backpacking trip I’ve been talking about?” she asked him, still crouched above him in bed. “I want you to come with me. I think we’d have fun together.”
It was all too much: the over-the-top messages, the constant barging into his condo, the intensity of her stare as she looked at him. He broke up with her right then and there, and though she left in a huff (“Your dick is too small anyway,” she called over her shoulder on her way out the door), a message appeared on his phone that night, calling him the love of her life.
I am not the love of your life,he wrote back.I am not anything to you. This is done.
He thought that would be the last he heard from her. If only he’d known.
The sun is getting higher now. Townsend feels sweat trickling down his neck, but still, he pushes himself harder, picking up his pace. He passes by Festival Beach and—before he can think better of it—turns left away from Town Lake, heading into East Austin, his least favorite neighborhood. East Austin, with its street art and dive bars and hipsters bitching about gentrification, not realizing that they are, in fact, the problem. Hipsters like Amanda.
A few days after the breakup, Amanda posted a picture on her grid, which he recognized as having been taken in his bedroom. Atfirst, she appeared totally naked—but when he zoomed in, he saw she was wearing a pair of his boxer shorts, like a prize. True psycho shit. He unfollowed her, hoping to be rid of her for good. But the Cuff correspondence continued, her once-saccharine love notes turned far more sinister. Threats, taunts, lies—nothing seemed to be off limits. And though he tried to block her profile, her messages continued to come through, undeterred. Like she was impervious to being blocked.
He knew he should just delete the app—that would be the easiest way to put an end to things. But the idea of doing so felt like admitting defeat. Why should he let one crazy woman drive him off the only halfway-decent dating app left? As unsettling as her messages had become, they were just words on a screen, and for all her talk of exposing Townsend’s secrets, she hadn’t actually done anything. He told himself she was just desperate for attention, and if he withheld it from her long enough, she’d go away.
